As a respite from political commentary, I offer here a chapter from We Three Kings, a suspense novel I completed in 1980. It is the second of a three-title series featuring Merritt Fury, an American entrepreneur hero first introduced in Whisper the Guns, published in 1992. The chapter is not entirely irrelevant in relation to the Islamic jihad, the Ground Zero mosque, and the pragmatic vacuity of American foreign policy. Because it is uncertain when and if this novel will ever be published, I thought it appropriate to give readers a sample of what many who have read the entire novel say should see the light of day.

In We Three Kings, Fury has come into possession of a rare and highly prized gold coin, the British Queen Una, given to him by a man whose life he saved but who was subsequently murdered by a Saudi sheik’s thugs. The sheik, who is a close relative of the ruling family and who holds a diplomatic post at the United Nations, wants the coin, and also suspects that Fury killed his younger brother during the first assault on Stephen Crenshaw, the murdered man. Fury also suspects the sheik of engineering a warehouse fire that destroyed some of his imported property. The sheik has been given leave to deal with Fury by an appeasing, circumspect State Department, not abroad, but on American soil. His interests are represented by a disgraced Texan politician, Cooper Dean.

The scene is a palatial residence in a suburb of New York City, Forest Hills Gardens, owned by the sheik. Fury has been invited here by the sheik to discuss the coin. The occasion, attended by the diplomatic corps, is to display a model of a museum the Saudis are planning as a showcase of Western culture. The disputed coin is to be one of its exhibits, in the Hall of the Firmament. During the soiree, Hamdan Khair escorts Fury to the sheik’s sanctum for the interview. He is one of the sheik’s functionaries, bested by Fury in a previous encounter.